This week's Aussie Nails Monday theme is Blue. Blue is my favourite (nail polish) colour so I was spoilt for choice with this theme! However, I wasn't spoilt for time, so I had to choose a quick and simple design. Today's March Nail Art Challenge theme just happens to be Sparkles, so what better way to combine the two than with a glitter gradient?
I used Essie Bikini So Teeny and Nails Inc Upper Brook Street as the undies. The glitter is Nails Inc Royal Arcade. The blue is pretty similar to Ulta3 New Years Eve, but it has a lot more different sizes, and it's extremely dense. I actually had trouble spreading it out enough to make a gradient!
Side note: How awesome is that crystal cap on Upper Brook Street??
And of course I had to mattify it. I love the look of glitter under a matte top coat.
Here are the other girls participating in Aussie Nails Monday:
Today's Nail Art March Challenge is St Patrick's Day... Because it's St Patrick's Day today! So I tried these four leaf clover nails using Polish and Panda's handy tutorial. They're really easy, even though you wouldn't be able to tell from the wonkiness of my attempt.
For the clover nails, I started with a base of Ulta3 Corsican Rose. I then painted the clovers with Illamasqua Rampage and painted over them with Pretty Serious Blue Gums on Boxing Day. The accent nail is a base of Rampage with a sponged gradient of Blue Gums and OPI Goldeneye. I can't get over the look of Goldeneye when it's sponged!
Illamasqua Rampage is such a perfect polish. It's a really rich dark rainforest green with a perfect 2 coat formula (like all Illamasqua polishes I've tried). But unfortunately it looks like I won't be buying many more Illamasquas anymore! This one took over 2 months to arrive, after we did a group order way back in January. Several weeks later the fiasco with Royal Mail happened, when they started destroying all nail polish to be sent out of the UK. So we didn't hear from Illamasqua for another few weeks as to the status of our order, and we had no idea what was going on with it. Eventually it just arrived on our doorsteps, and to top it all off the address it came from was an Aussie address! The ridiculous thing is that Illamasqua is made in Australia, and yet they've taken the option to ship to Australia off their website, and the prices are jacked up a ridiculous amount at the counters at Myer. This, combined with their terrible customer service and communication, probably means I will not be purchasing any more of their polishes myself. Which is a real shame because I really like them!
Double whammy today! Instead of combining two themes into one mani like yesterday, I'm just posting two nail art designs in one post.
First up is my mani for the Colour Block theme. I really should be using tape to make it less wobbly, but I'm too impatient. I used Butter London Macbeth, Ulta3 Earl Grey and Chanel Blue Rebel. I'm actually in love with this combination of colours. Blue Rebel is the perfect one coater navy, rich but subdued. Also, Y U SHRINK SO MUCH SECHE VITE? *shakes fist* This photo was taken within an hour of applying top coat and you can already see an unacceptable level of shrinkage.
For the Luck theme, I chose to feature Ulta3 Luck of the Irish as a glitter gradient along with I Love Nail Polish (or I <3 NP) Ginger Spice Latte, over Essie Navigate Her. Now that I've combined green and gold, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do for the St Patrick's Day theme...
If you follow me on Instagram, or know me in real life, you may know that I saw The Prodigy live last week. I've seen them live before but I never tire of their incredible energy. Even though the entire concert was an exercise in getting elbowed in the face, it was awesome. The support act was Borgore, who admittedly I had never heard of before, apart from this one song:
Again, if you know me in real life at all, you will know that I love cake (and dessert of any kind, really). And that I also hate to share. I suppose that trait is a product of my only child upbringing. I refuse to share any food, even when I order meals that are obviously way too big for me to just eat myself. I mean, I'm fine with letting people take a couple of bites. But I absolutely detest splitting a meal with anyone, especially my boyfriend, whose definition of "taking a sip" is inhaling most of your drink. So when I heard this song, I thought, "This is my life song. Someone has finally written a song about me!"
I'm late for both of these so I combined them into one mani. I've seen this design doing the rounds on Instagram lately, originally inspired by @sparrownails and @nailsofjessiek. I was planning on doing a different colour combo so as not to completely copy them, but I just love blues so much! So I ended up using OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It for the base, Ulta3 Spring Shower, OPI Fly and China Glaze Man Hunt for the gradient.
Here are the other girls participating in Aussie Nails Monday:
In "things I have wasted my money on recently" news, I impulse bought these Black Milk Black Triangle Leggings and Blue Galaxy Swimsuit. I regret nothing. I never actually understood the hype about Black Milk, and leggings in general, until I tried these. The swimsuit is so flattering, and the leggings make my legs look a million miles long. I don't care if people say that leggings are not pants, I will wear these as pants and look kickass!
I've decided to do the Californails "Totally Doable I Have A Life!" March Nail Art Challenge to get back into the groove of doing nail art and posting on this blog.
Yesterday's theme was Chevron so I did a quick tape chevron with Nails Inc Kensington High Street and Sportsgirl Goddess. It's a bit wonky (especially on the pinky finger) so I need more practice, but I really like this colour combination! Plus tape manis are super easy to do - this tape manicure basics tutorial on Lacquerheads of Oz has some really great tips for getting it right.
I'm also going to be blogging about a bit more than just nails. My main goal for a few years now has been to buy my own place, but that's recently fallen by the wayside with graduating from uni and job hunting. I need to get back on track with saving up so I've decided, in order to hold myself accountable, I'm going to be documenting my progress and my daily purchases, and keeping a tally. I did consider setting up a separate blog for this but I barely have time to update one blog, let alone two. I won't be writing too much - just a short couple of sentences at the end of each post, so it'll be easy to ignore if you only want to look at pictures of nails. But it makes it easier for me to save if I know that other people are judging my rash puchasing decisions!
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